Words Fail Me

This latest terrorist attempt... oh sorry, I mean this latest Man-caused near disaster has me speechless. I'm speechless with stupidity.

Apparently I don't get how denying travelers blankets and pillows will stop a terrorist.

I'm speechless at how Mr. Fiscal Responsibility, who is renting a Hawaiian compound for his friends and family manages to take time out of his busy vacation of golfing and partying to thank the brave citizens for jumping the killer and saving the flight (dude! The bomb was a dud, we should be thankful we weren't mourning the death of potentially thousands of victims on Christmas).

I'm speechless at how this cold blooded terrorist now has all the rights of the American citizens that he attempted to kill and is being treated as though he shoplifted.

I'm speechless how Mr. Golf praised citizens for thwarting an "isolated extremist"... how about citizens doing the job of your inept Department of Homeland Security who had him on a watch list, had a warning from his father, and still let him get on one of our planes.

I'm speechless about the money that will be spent to "review" the "incident" to find out how this happened. We've had a Major in the army e-mailing Al Quada, we've had the Crotch bomber e-mailing Al Quada and his father ratting him out... how do you think it happened other than your incompetence? Hello?

Granted, if the father had e-mailed the warning and said "Greetings, I'm a rich Nigerian banker and need your help..." I can see where that might have been deleted as spam, but still....

I'm speechless at "experts" getting on tv and broadcasting which seats are prime terrorist spots because of their vulnerabilities.

I'm speechless that our DHS leader thinks the system worked, then didn't work.

I'm speechless that somebody isn't pointing their finger at Bush yet (wait for it).

I'm surprised that they didn't say the pants bomber did it because he couldn't get health insurance.

I'm speechless that there is talk that providing x-ray machines that may reveal a passenger's yoohoo is being held up because people will be offended that some stranger will see their x-ray shaped yoohoo.

I'm speechless that our fearless leader has the gall to tell us that "we will not rest until we get those responsible", um, I thought we weren't going to rest until we had jobs, and we weren't going to rest until we had Bin Laden, and we weren't going to rest until we played that back nine... oh wait, that last one is probably the only one that will actually get done.

I'm speechless that the excuse from Gibbs is that there is 500,000 names on the terror watch list... we use computers you dolt, its not just one guy with a freakin pencil so it doesn't take that long to do a search on a name you idiot. And for that matter, if there are 500,000 people we suspect of wanting to kill us... shouldn't we be rounding them up and locking them up instead allowing them to show up at airports and saying "sorry, no ticket for you"? At the very least, the list will be much shorter.

so yeah... I'm speechless, can you tell?

Enough of the Snow, Someone come take it away

Part of the "fun" of owning Siberian Huskies is that they tend to wake you at 4am because they want to go play in the snow... and boy did we get snow. A ton of snow, 80 feet of snow... ok, it wasn't 80 feet, more like 2, but it drifted to like 4 feet, and then there's the wonderful snowplow that plowed the street which means we had 12 feet of packed chunky snow in our driveway... fine, it wasn't that much, but it felt like it.

So, bright and early, hubby and I were out shoveling out from all this crap, I mean; beautiful serene snow.

After 5 minutes hubby leans on his shovel and says: "Quick, go untie your tubes and squirt us out some 16 year olds to shovel this crap". I explained that the birthing process doesn't necessarily squirt out ready-to-shovel 16 year olds and in this day, they would be obese diabetic sloth children who would call protective services on us for even suggesting we put them to work. "Fine!" hubby snorted (which isn't a good thing to do in the cold because of nose icicle issues), then he proceeded to blame me for being selfish and not having the forward thinking to squirt out some kids 16 years ago so that we wouldn't have to shovel our driveway. I didn't hear the whole rant because I was distracted by someone driving by with a snow blower in the back of their truck and was trying to whore myself out to get them to come blow our cars free. Me, selfish? pffft. When the truck kept driving I turned to cursing them and flipped them off, but that's ineffective when wearing mittens.

After we had shoveled our drive, cleared off the trucks and reminisced about the good old days when neighbors came out and helped each other and people with snow blowers would spontaneously help their neighbors out, blah blah, bitch and moan... the neighborhood came alive with people with snow blowers helping each other out. THE BASTARDS!

So we left and went to Starbucks... and tried running them over on the way out of the driveway.

Oh, and you'll be pleased to know that my company's "holiday" party was finally canceled... so I bought a dress for nothing and don't have to teeter around in 2 feet snow in heels and freeze my butt off getting there... I'm crushed, which is why I'm sitting around in sleepy pants sipping hot chocolate. I'll get over it.

She's Fallen and She Got Back Up

Its been a while since I’ve ranted, but don’t fear, I’m still keeping a journal of rant topics. Unfortunately by the time I get off my butt and write them out, they’ll be so old that I won’t remember why these things made me so mad. Whatever, you’ll just have to suffer through them anyway.

Since I’m snowbound by the STORM OF THE CENTURY OF THE MILLENNIUM OF THE UNIVERSE, and thankfully didn’t have to go to a stupid company “holiday” party (because my firm is too much of a pussy to call it Christmas and face the wrath of morons that scream “SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND PRIVATELY OWNED FIRM” or something like that), because instead of screwing us out of $35 bucks for the party and canceling it, they moved it to Sunday, where I’m sure we’re now double-booked with someone’s wedding reception and all of the guests will be wondering A.) who are all the drunks, and B.) why do they speak in acronyms and describe the food like “That curry is a paradigm shift outside the box”.

So, instead of wearing uncomfortable heels and pretending like I actually LIKE the people I work with and am not at a party simply because its cheap food and free alcohol and the annual bet when someone wearing a WAAAAY too small strapless dress will fall out of it while doing the electric glide, I’m in sleepy pants with stew in the crock pot procrastinating on doing anything because we’re HAVING An UNPRECEDENTED BLIZZARD OF EPIC PROPORTIONS DURING CLIMATE CHAOS GLOBAL WARMING-VILLE.

Which reminds me of my blog title and you’re probably getting impatient and waiting for me to actually get to the subject... fine, be that way...

I called my mom. Well, actually she called my cell phone while I was pushing a cart filled with heavy dog food in the pet store, which isn’t conducive to answering a phone ringing in the bowels of my bag, but by the time I dug it out and removed the gum wrapper off the case, she had hung up, so I had to call her back.

She spent 20 minutes yammering about life in general while I tried to maneuver the wide load cart through the narrow crap filled aisles until she got to the part where she said “Oh, and I fell down and I wanted to tell you before your sister called and told you.” That stopped me cold in the aisle because the last time she “called before my sister called me” was when she chopped the tip of her finger off with a bandsaw.

Apparently, since she only had cataract surgery done on one eye, her depth perception is crap and she didn’t see that the sidewalk was messed up and she fell, but some nice people (one guy driving by stopped) helped her and made sure she was ok and then saw her to her house and sometimes its nice having your mom live in a small town because had she lived where I do, swarms of idiots would have picked her clean like pirana in seconds. Apparently she cut her chin and scraped her nose and messed up her hand a little, but she claims she’s fine. Of course in the aisle of Petsmart I’m all freaking out because old people bones are more brittle than those balsa wood airplanes you got as a kid and I was picturing one of her arm bones snapping like so much airplane wing with that sickening crunch noise. “Don’t make me put you in a home!” I said, probably too loudly because some woman walking by me stopped and glared at me. “I’ll put my mom in a home if I want!” I snarled at her.

Then I spent the next 15 minutes insisting that I would pay for her cataract surgery premiums but she had to call and make an appointment for the other eye ASAP or else I would put her in a home, which involved the usual “yes, I know you can take care of yourself, no I don’t think you’re senile, yes I know you can save up the money, but why owe an insurance company when you can just owe me money because I don’t charge nearly as much interest as an insurance company, and yes I know those government bastards are trying to take away your medicare benefits and no I promise that I won’t eat you even if you’re made into a tasty italian dish because you aren’t even italian I picture you more as a veal dish, but a lot tougher, and no I won’t break your arm if you don’t pay me back and yes I love you and would visit you in the home if I did stick you in one.” until I could convince her that I wasn’t sending goons to cart her away and she could go back to playing solitaire on her laptop with the tv turned up too loud.

About a half hour later my sister called: “Mom fell down!” she yelled at me all dramatic and freaking out.

“Well, get off the fricken phone and pick her up” I yelled and hung up on her.

It Must Be The Worms

Nothing reverts a grown up back to childhood like being sick. You wish your parents were there to bring you hot chicken noodle soup, put a hand to your forehead and instantly know by touch whether you have a fever or not, and wait on you hand and foot until you are well again.

Yeah, I miss the good ol days, now that I'm all adult-like and have to make my own chicken noodle soup, have no clue if I have a fever and the only thermometer in the house has been up the dog's butt, and the laundry sits and mocks me until I'm well enough to do it.

Today I felt well enough to take a shower. Actually I just couldn't stand myself any more and threw myself in the shower, my mom's words ringing in my ears "take a shower, it'll make you feel better and wash the germs off of you". Yeah, I did feel somewhat better. "Now don't forget to dry your hair, if you go out with wet hair you'll catch pneumonia". My mom really did think that going out in wet hair would cause pneumonia, ear aches, tuberculosis and all manner of other horrible things. Apparently that's not the case, but you can't convince her otherwise.

My grandmother felt that you could catch horrible "private" diseases and pregnancy just by sitting on a public toilet. She also felt that we would all meet the same fate as the Titanic if we took the Ferry over to Mackinaw Island. My grandmother was also the one that gave me the middle name "Lou" because I didn't have a middle name. Grandma took a lot of pills. She also thought that you could catch worms from a myriad of things, such as eating raw cookie dough. I guess this was why my dad thought that everything was caused by worms.

"What's wrong?"
"I have a headache"
"Its the worms"
"I don't have worms"
"That's the worms talking".

My husband has an upset stomach now, which he's blaming on the pepermint white mocha he drank earlier. I'm pretty sure he has worms.

The Economy

Despite the stupid title, I assure you that there's no need to run off and poke your eyes out with a fork, I'm not going to do one of those long drawn out, drawling, make ya wanna puke dissertations on the U.S. Economy or anything like that... although if someone paid me I could, but instead I'll just sound the alarm over something I found on the back of a Wheat Thins box that disturbed me greatly.

Oh sure, you've probably seen the commercials where people are telling you to rip the gold fillings out of your teeth and mail them to their company in this handy trustworthy envelope because the value of the dollar is in the crapper and you'll need something to barter with when the rogue element starts racing around in crazy looking cars and speak with Australian accents, and you only have so many viable organs to trade. I laughed at those commercials as well, until I was eating Wheat Thins (that delicious snack cracker, and yes, since I haven't received a semi trailer full of Butterfinger Crisps, I'm now whoring for the Wheat Thin people), and found this alarming statement on the back of the box:

You can clearly see here that the U.S. Dollar is now only worth 16 Wheat Thins and 2 Tablespoons of humus. Oh dear lord are we screwed!!! Well, I'm not too screwed, because I happen to have a whole box of Wheat Thins (that I only ate approximately $3.00 out of before learning how valuable they now are). I have no idea why the Federal Reserve wanted to go with a snack cracker as the next monetary thing, but whatever, I'll go with it. The toll booth operator apparently hadn't gotten the memo and yelled at me for tossing 36 hummus slathered wheat thins into the toll hopper. She's probably still using that paper crap, the poor thing.

My husband had called and left me a voicemail that consisted of a high pitched whine that is commonly used by one of our dogs when she wants something (oyster cracker, our dinner, a Lexus). Having been married for 3,000 years, we no longer leave real messages for each other like "Hey honey, hope your day is going well, give me a call when you have a chance". Nope, our voicemails consist of high pitched keening noises, sometimes a whispered "shoot me now, please, just shoot me", or the "I want noise".

I called him back:
"What do you want?"
"Um, I don't know, I forgot"
"Well, you left a voicemail that said EEEEEEEeeeerrrrrrrrr"
"Oh, I need to go buy a beard trimmer"

Yes, from EEEEEEEEeeeeeerrrrrr he got beard trimmer. Its now quite apparent that we've evolved into our own guttural language and we can just do away with english altogether.

In case you were wondering, he didn't get a beard trimmer, because I ate all of the wheat thins.

Why do I even bother with titles

Yes, its time for more ranting, but before I start my rant, I'm going to start with a commercial of sorts.

The Butterfinger Crisp. I bought one of those halloween sized bags of them, with no intention of giving them to children. Nope, I view Halloween as socialist propaganda, if children want candy they can get a job and buy it themselves, why should I work hard only to fork over good candy to kids who just want a hand out. Anyhoo, back to the Butterfinger Crisp. I would like to inform all of you that the only thing they could do to improve this candy treat is if they found a way for them to unwrap and throw themselves straight into your mouth. I can't vouch for the regular sized bar, but the bags o' little tiny bars are fantastic, and yes, I would definitely whore myself out to the Nestle company and accept a truck load of these treats for this stellar and unbiased review of their incredibly delicious treat.

I would also like to ask those people that design online courses that make you sit through an explanation of the "right" answer, even after you answered the question right, to immediately throw themselves off of a high building, and if you survive, crawl with your broken legs back up to the top of the building and jump again. You suck. You really, truly suck. If I get the question right, move on. Stop wasting my time by going over something I already know, I know it, I answered your stupid question, if I wanted to know more... well why would I need to know "more" if I answered the question right, you idiot. This goes especially to those types of courses that are mandatory and you have to take year after year. Sure, things may change, but ask me a question about the things that changed, and if I get the pre-test wrong, then make me suffer through the drivel, but for the love of GAH stop the madness!!!

There is a very big bug sitting near the ceiling of my living room. It hasn't moved for some time now, and since I'm too lazy to do anything about it until it swoops across the room and smacks me in the forehead, I'm inclined to let it just sit there. If you don't hear from me in a few days, please call the police and report that a large bug killed me. Of course, by that time the dogs will have eaten my carcass and frankly I'm ok with that.

I close tonight's very quick, yet efficient rant with the following: Facebook, I know you are free and I should be grateful for whatever I get, but lately I haven't gotten anything from you, other than a notice saying my account is under maintenance, and when I do get in, you won't let me do anything. You are about worthless for the past week and if you don't watch out, I'll just go back to the dark ages and start e-mailing people again... um... or not. Just fix it will you.

Just Plain Rambling

I apologize for the lack of funny cartoons with this post (and yes, I’ll be updating my Facebook icon soon with the new hairdo and some blood will be involved, but that’s another story for another day, shut up I’ll tell you when I’m ready), and this will also be a rambling diatribe (whatever that is) while I wait for my iPhone to download the latest update and hopefully fix the totally f’d up Facebook app that refuses to show me anything but a page that says “no comments” which happens to be the story of my life but does Facebook have to rub it in?

Apparently I’ve eaten something that has grown in my stomach, raised some children and is now fighting its way out via the only available exit and its not happy about the trip. No, I don’t know what it was, nor do I want to know, but frankly I’m going to find out eventually and I hope it doesn’t seek retribution for something.

I’m currently mad at my husband because he won’t let me blog things. Its to the point now that any time anything remotely funny and/or/not cool happens, he immediately says: “Don’t you dare blog that!” I mean, come ON! There’s so much material in our dysfunctional lives that telling me I can’t blog something makes me want to blog it even more and then I become fixated about it and actually blog it in MacJournal (MacJournal, the most wonderful piece of software known to humans and I highly recommend it and would love the makers of MacJournal to give me something for free). I’m all about the shameless promotion and frankly if you want to give me something, I’ll totally review it, but frankly if it sucks, I’m gonna say it sucks so you better only give me totally cool stuff or else I’ll rip it to shreds and run you out of business.... are you listening UPS?

Anyhoo, I’ll ramble in an entry in MacJournal and would it be my fault if I actually blogged about it in MacJournal (where you can set up different types of journals for different blogs and upload them, except it won’t allow you to imbed pictures and upload them, but I blame blogger for being a butthead about that, not the wonderful MacJournal. I also truly have no idea why I’m fixating on MacJournal tonight, perhaps its the 7 foot tapeworm in my gut about to burst out and take over the world, which I would totally blog about whether my husband asked me to or not and yes, I would upload pictures before I died of total blood loss.

Perhaps my stomach is all upset before of stories like this. Seriously? Converting hotels and old people homes into places to hold illegals while they wait to be deported? How about you find them, you determine they are illegal, you drive them to the border and shoo them back where they came from? Do we really need to hold them in hotels? I’m about ready to lawfully sneak into Mexico, then cross the border without my passport so I can get me a nice free stay in a hotel. I haven’t been on vacation in like 10 freakin years! I work my butt off and can’t afford a vacation and don’t have any accrued vacation time, so this seems to be the easiest and cheapest way to get me a vacation! I can’t think of a better waste of my hard earned dollars than to house people who break our laws in the comfort of a hotel. Frankly, I don’t see why all criminals aren’t housed in hotels, why should we just limit it to illegal aliens, don’t our citizen criminals deserve better accommodations?

Ok, I have to go get some paper towels because my head just exploded.

The Greatest Thing Since Coffee

I'm sure all of you have seen the new coffee thing from Starbucks, the Via.

I've said all along that someone needed to create this and leave it to Starbucks to steal the idea straight from my head and make a million bucks from it (I hate you as much as I'm addicted to you, you suck Starbucks).

Picture this: you are trapped in a well and without coffee, what do you do? I'm sure a lot of you have thought this, and went into a full tilt panic. How the heck are you suppose to survive in the bottom of a well without coffee? I wake up in a sweat every time I think of this, but thanks to Starbucks, the answer is simple: Via. The concept of a pixie stick-like coffee is pure genius and should have won the Nobel Peace Prize for keeping people from ripping each others' heads off when there's no coffee around... but noooo, they gave it to some guy that spent 10 days in office and didn't do a freakin thing except clog the airways with speeches about wonderful things he would do (and still hasn't done).

Simply rip open the top and pour that delicious powder straight into your mouth and TAH DAH you have instant coffee!!! I mean why did it take someone this long to come up with the concept. Pixie sticks have been around since 1952 so you would have thought that a company or person would have thought: HEY! If you can pour pure sugar down your throat from a little tube, then why not coffee? It took 57 years for someone to actually market this wonderful thing.

Hey, wait a minute... what do you mean you're suppose to pour it in hot water? That's stupid!

UPS, you still suck

I found my new purse. Yep, me. It wasn’t the squad of professional UPS detectives working on my “case” after an “investigation” had been opened up. I certainly didn’t see swarms of UPS police converging on my neighborhood looking for clues, frisking people, kicking in doors and searching houses for my bag in their “investigation”. Nope, I didn’t even see UPS anywhere near my neighborhood, it took little ol me to find it... without the use of weaponry or threats, although my screaming could have been heard for miles, but it had nothing to do with the fact that despite HUGE neon reflective numbering on our mailbox, the UPS guy left my box on the porch of the neighbors. Not just ANY neighbor, but the neighbors who abandoned their house and left it to rot and become a cesspool of weeds, mosquitos and I’m wondering if the PODS people even want their big metal box back. Yeah, hey UPS, did you stop to think that someone sending something to a totally obviously abandoned house (your first clue should have been wading through waste high weeds) might be an identity theft type or nefarious of some sort and should have been suspicious? Not only that, but the fact that the address of that house, in all its abandoned glory, DIDN’T EVEN MATCH THE ADDRESS ON THE BOX????

Ok, whatever, I happened to look on the porch of the infamous half filled in nasty muck pool water abandoned house and saw a box peeking out from behind all of the weeds. I risked my safety by leaping, gazelle-like through the grass and who knows what and grabbed my box, held it over my head, screamed with glee and did the happy dance... then ran in fear as I’m pretty sure a Bengal Tiger was stalking me from the weeds.

Note to self: although they’ve done expensive studies to determine that texting while driving is dangerous, because there are no expensive studies that say ripping open a Nine West box, ripping the plastic from the purse, then transferring the contents of one bag to the new bag isn’t dangerous, I’m here to say that you shouldn’t try that at home, on a busy highway, while driving to starbucks where we scored some free samples of that Via instant coffee stuff. Its a banner day: new bag thought lost, and free coffee samples.

The bag is totally perfect... after I cut off the annoying decorative loop things on the side that jangled when I walked and cut out the magnetic clasp thing because magnetic anything is bad for iPhones, just perfect. I don’t have a problem with most decorative things, but not decorative things that actually clank and make noise when I walk. Seriously, how can I sneak up on a terrorist and overtake them if my perfect leather bag is clanking and tinkling like a wind chime. Ok, its more like: how can I sneak down the hall to work late and not alert a supervisor type to my lateness, but still, both valid reasons to cut off the round things that make noise. Another reason was that when the one in the back was swinging around (because I walk like a dork and I’m blaming broken wii foot and not to digress but I tried wearing my big clunky heel boots yesterday and once broken wii foot really started to hurt and still does so apparently its only partially healed wii foot and I need to stick to flats, but I digress) anyhoo, the metal thing kept hitting me in the back and I kept thinking that someone was tapping me on the back and I kept turning around and screaming “WHAT???” to the point where people started whispering about me... more than normal.

So now that I’ve ripped out all of the annoying things... it really is a cool back and totally squishy (I made my office mate touch it and confirm that it is squishy, and yes, he admitted it was squishy and I have to give him kudos for actually touching a purse and saying its squishy and it could be that he may be afraid of me, but who knows).

So, I have my bag and I should be ok for at least a week... unless I’m stressed out again.

&*%$^%$$#@@#*&^^ UPS!!!!!!

I think it goes without saying that I have a purse addiction. Ok, I admit that I’m a purse HO, seriously... I am obsessed with getting THE perfect purse (which varies from day to day) and go to the ends of the earth trying to track down a bag I’ve seen in an ad or in a movie, or on someone to the point where I’ve probably been close to being arrested for stalking and taking surreptitious, lewd pictures of handbags.

Needless to say, when I’m under incredible stress, I tend to buy bags. When my dear sweet Sammy (the $13,500.00 dog) yipped and started limping a week back, I knew it was a blown knee and sure enough, he needed surgery (now the $15,000.00 dog). Without a smoke, with no boyfriend Chantix, what could I do... except buy a handbag... THE most perfect tote bag.... I happened to find that day. I wanted it, I needed it, it must be mine, dammit I can’t find it locally, I’ll have to order it and give it to me right now, or express UPS.

The weekend went by, no updated shipping status. Monday went by, no updated shipping status. I cursed nine west, I cursed UPS, then I forgot about it because Sam went in for his surgery and I was too busy pacing and chewing on my fingernails, but then the surgery went well and we were scheduled to pick him up today and LOOK!!!! My bag has arrived locally and will be delivered today WHOOOT!

UPS generally delivers around noon, and husband would be out doing something at noon, that I suggested he go do around noon, for no reason whatsoever I’m adult I can buy a handbag or two... or 1,200 (that’s not an actual count, I exaggerate and don’t listen to any comments attributed by a guy calling himself my husband, its all a lie).

No deliver around noon, or 1pm, or 2pm, then when we got Sam back from the surgeon, no bag at 4pm, or even 5pm. Rat BASTARD UPS lying sack of... oooh, there’s the UPS truck on the next street at 6:20 pm, happy dance, happy dance, stand in front of the big window like a pathetic soul not letting on to hubby that I’m actually waiting on the UPS guy to deliver a bag that I have to figure out how to get into the house without admitting that its a bag, blah blah... um, just how long does it take for a UPS truck to go around the corner and why does it now say that my bag was delivered?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

Yep, the driver delivered it to the wrong house. I’m guessing that its on the next street, but its dark out and although I could pack my glock and go sneaking from house to house looking for packages on the porch that I would run up and grab and run away (probably only to find that I had stolen the neighbors depends by mail order), I opted to call UPS... those rat bastards.

Did you know that UPS makes it nearly impossible to talk to a human. They have one of those smarmy voice recognition systems that really make you want to go out and find the computer system and beat it with a hammer. “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand you” when you screamed “YOU SCUM SUCKING BASTARDS DELIVERED MY COVETED PURSE TO THE WRONG HOUSE”. I’m sure you understood every word and you are probably a real human that is trained to sound like a computer and you probably laugh and laugh at people like me screaming obscenities in the phone trying to get a human to answer.

UPS Fact #1: if you scream “LAWSUIT” into the phone, it actually WILL connect you to a real person... how funny is that???!!!!

UPS customer service, my name is something you can’t pronounce or know how to spell so you can’t possibly report me for being rude, how can I help you?

Me - YOU LOST MY PACKAGE!!! (weeping now)

UPS CS: Oh, I am very sorry, let me track your package to see where it is.

Me - seriously? It says its at my house, but its not, its lost

UPS CS: it says that it was delivered to your house, are you sure nobody else accepted it?

Me - No, I’m positive as I stood in front of the window like a crazed loon for hours without blinking and peed myself so I wouldn’t miss the truck.

UPS CS: well, we will need to have you contact Nine West and have them ask us to start an investigation.

Me - this package was very important to me (weeping openly) you have no idea how badly I needed that liver

UPS CS: um... really, it was a liver?

Me - Yes, now I will surely die if you don’t find it tonight

UPS CS: Nine West sells livers?

Me- SHUT UP, its a purse ok? Fine, are you happy? Its an expensive purse, dammit and I paid extra just so you would lose it a day early than regular delivery and besides... YOU LOST MY PACKAGE!

UPS CS: have Nine West request an investigation

Me - FINE, FINE, you suck, your company sucks, I hope they lose your mother.

UPS CS: thank you for using UPS.

So I called Nine West, and the perky woman named Edith tracked my package as well.

Edith: it says it was delivered

Me: Well Edith, are you going to believe a delivery service that couldn’t care less if I died without my purse or me, the person whose credit card is paying your salary at the moment?

Edith: I’ll request an investigation

Me: I hope they take some DNA samples and perhaps interrogate all of my neighbors. I’m pretty convinced that the people on the other street have some person locked in their basement or something.

Edith: really?

Me: who knows, but I’m guessing they don’t have the purse because who would steal a purse to give to the person they have locked in the basement.

Edith: ok, well UPS should give you a call and let you know what they find and if they can’t find the box then they’ll pay you back the amount of the purse and the delivery fee.

Me: damn straight they’ll reimburse me... but that means I still won’t have my purse (starts weeping again).

I hang up.

Hubby: why were you on the phone, you never call anyone

Me: um... FINE I ORDERED A PURSE AND UPS LOST IT!

Hubby: figured... and you’ll probably need to go out and get another purse in the meantime.

Me: well, yeah

So here is the new bag that I’m obsessing about... if anyone knows where I can get one just like it, let me know, but seriously, don’t ship it UPS.

WTF

I think that's aptly titled, and frankly I don't think I should even bother with the rest of the post because I'm pretty sure that everyone knows what this means and probably don't have to spell it out... fine, be that way!

It started off with Oliver Cyst making an appearance. Hadn't been visited by Oliver in quite some time and frankly I have no idea why he decided to pop up and cause agony over the simplest of movements. Who is Oliver Cyst? My gah, really, I don't have time to go into all of that fiasco, suffice it to say its a cyst in my left wrist that decides to pop up once in a while and make me miserable.

Then Sam, our spineless, bionic hip puppy was outside running, yipped and now is limping. Every time Sam limps, its the sound of the cash register. Sam can't just sprain something, Sam always has to have some kind of bizarro injury that costs us large amounts of money. Please note that anyone posting a comment suggesting we are insane for spending thousands on a dog or suggesting we have him put to sleep will be hunted down and maimed, refused medical care, then put to sleep. Better yet, throw your child off the roof and then let me bitch at you for taking it to the doctor, and while you wring your hands nervously, I'll suggest you put your broken child to sleep... in other words, bite me.

So, on top of that, I go into the back room and discover that our water heater is leaking water all over. Well just spiffy keen shoot me now! Lucky for us, our water heater is covered under the expensive mondo warranty policy thingie that says they'll just replace that sucker for little to no money or fix it for the same pittance of money. Everything is covered... see the picture below and please point out to me what you think isn't covered (I made it easy with arrows), then guess what exactly is wrong with our water heater.
Yep, the water heater repair guy shows up, pronounces the water heater (that's covered) is just fine, the problem is the leaking pipe leading to the water heater, and the "reserve" tank connected to the water heater... both of which are NOT covered under our handy warranty program... of course. FINE, so fix these issues.... but he can't because he's not a plumber, he's just a water heater guy (I would think that you would need to be both, but apparently he's just a specialist on water heaters), but he was nice enough to send a message to the plumbers and tell them that its an emergency, that water is leaking all over, and since its Friday at 4pm... I should expect to hear from someone on Monday. Gosh, good thing he said it was an emergency, otherwise it may be months before I hear from someone apparently.

In the meantime, he told me that I need to turn off the breaker to the heat pump and shut off the hot water... um... really? I mean its actually been leaking for 2 weeks actually and seems to work just fine, what's the big deal... and what do you mean no hot water until the plumbers fix it... SONOFA....

Saturday afternoon rolls around and the plumbers call, all chipper and happy. Apparently the "reserve" tank is a special thing that the Anne Arundel County code enforcement people receive a kick back on and have made it mandatory that all homes have them, so that's why they cost $300. My 80 gallon water heater cost $300, so you're telling me that the itty bitty whatever the frick tiny mandatory piece of crap leaking goofy looking thing that does absolutely NOTHING is going to cost me the same as my water heater, that isn't covered in this repair, and the replacing of the leaking pipe is going to cost me. Its at this point, standing in the kitchen with a sink full of dirty dishes, reeking like a homeless person with nasty hair, pile of dirty clothes gathering because I have no hot water, I began weeping and laughing because the soonest they can come out is Monday afternoon.

Sure, why not, I've got some dog wipes that says they will make my coat silky smooth and some baby wipes for that deep down clean so I can go to work looking professional... ok, actually I never go to work looking professional, unless its professionally demented, but I do tend to smell like grapefruit extract and cucumber soap and some flowery shampoo stuff, not like I haven't bathed since Friday.

Needless to say, I'll be showing up to work long enough to say that I'm out for the rest of the day, then I'll be at home pacing and waiting for the plumbers to show up... then soaking in a hot tub once there is glorious hot water again.

The Art of the Deal

We cancelled DirecTV and Comcast and went with Verizon FIOS for all of our cabley, landliney, internety things. We refuse to use them for mobley phoney things as you will need to pry our iPhones from our cold dead hands first, and frankly if this damn cold that isn’t swine flu doesn’t go away soon... I’m just sayin.

Anyhooo, this morning I get a phone call. Normally I don’t answer calls from our home phone because we never give anyone we like our home phone number. Businesses and annoying people get our home number and if you are reading this and have our home number... yeah, sorry, you suck.

I’m guessing that the Dayquil had something to do with me actually answering the home number, especially when it came up as some obscure 888 number, which usually means telemarketer. Ok, whatever, I answer, and its Comcast! If you ever want cheaper service and more channels, all you have to do is threaten to cancel or even cancel and they call you non-stop, begging you to come back. Its like an old girlfriend or something, except more pathetic.

Desperate Comcast Telemarketer: What if we throw in HD channels and faster internet?

Me: I want a pony.

DCT: ..... excuse me?

Me: A pony, a cute pony that I can ride, but I actually don’t want to take care of during the week, so can you bring me a pony on the weekends where I can show my friends and pet it and do things with it like take it for ice cream, but don’t actually have to care for it.

DCT: You mean a real pony?

Me: Of course a real pony! I can just go out and get a fake plastic pony any time, but if you want me to switch AGAIN over to Comcast, I mean come on, you have to make it worth my while.

DCT: I can’t give you a pony

Me: You gave me a modem that I have to return, so its not like you’re actually GIVING me anything, its like you would LOAN me the pony, it would still be yours and all, like the annoying modem I have to return, but the pony wouldn’t be annoying.

DCT: um....

Me: Fine, if you can’t give me a pony then I’ll just stick with Verizon, at least they were nice enough to mow my lawn every week.

DCT: Verizon is mowing your lawn?

Me: yeah, well, they don’t know that yet, but there’s a guy scheduled to come out for maintenance and the lawnmower just happens to be in front of the door and all...

Vacation

I’m officially on vacation now... well, I’m actually sick for the next two days with a cold, but our timesheet thing only has “paid time off” and not “sick” so I’m on vacation, but really sick. I don’t actually start vacation until Tuesday because Monday is a holiday and doesn’t count toward PTO, but right now I’m not going back to work until the 14th, which is sweeeet.

I wanted to explain that in my official work out of office automatic e-mail responder thing:

Hi, I’m on vacation until the 14th, but actually I’m sick for the next two days, then its the weekend and monday is a holiday so I’m on vacation starting Tuesday and coming back that next monday. In case you were wondering, I have a cold, because I know how people wonder when you call out sick because they’re always “she didn’t look sick” and frankly it doesn’t really matter because it all comes out of the same “vacation” pot whether you’re sick or on vacation, but I just wanted to throw it out there that in case you were thinking of calling me after seeing that I’m actually sick and not on vacation, that you probably shouldn’t call me because I’m sick and don’t even think about calling me when I’m on vacation either. Frankly, the only reason I’m taking off is because I got sick of people running in fear and accusing me of spreading swine flu all over the office, and frankly if I did have swine flu, yes, I would be licking my hand and touching everyone that I hate, but no, its just a cold, but you just can’t leave it be and have to insist I cough into my elbow and dip myself in hand sanitizer and frankly its just easier staying home and feeding my used kleenex to my dog, who happens to love used kleenex, but I have to be careful or she’ll totally eat too many and that’s not a good thing. So, I’m pretty sure that its just a cold, but just in case, you shouldn’t call or even e-mail me (as if I’d check my work phone or e-mail, pffft, that’s not going to happen) as I’m pretty sure the CDC has now found that swine flu can travel through the phone lines and contaminate you and your unborn children, so its best for your family and lineage that you don’t call or e-mail me... probably even shouldn’t think about me either, because there’s that whole issue where I lived in Europe for 2.5 years and contracted mad cow, so probably thinking of me will give you mad cow, or disqualify you from giving life saving blood and making you feel like scum, and yes, by the way I AM on Nyquil, why do you ask?

Unfortunately Microsoft Outlook has some sort of limitation on the “out of office assistant” thing and wouldn’t let me leave all that, so I just said I’m out and will be back on the 14th. I’m pretty sure anyone that knows me will know what I meant to say.

Hello, Its Me Again

Yes, I know we had some rough words when we last saw each other... ok, I had rough words, you just sat there, but you have to understand, I thought I was ready to step out on my own and go about my life, but things happened differently than what I expected.

I had no idea that sitting around on my butt for the past 6 weeks in that stupid boot, unable to do any sort of exercising would make me do it again, but there I was, shoving anything edible in my mouth with both hands, feeling all blobby again, so I just had to do it... yes, I starting shooting up heroin. Ok, that’s not true, I just started smoking again.

AHA, see, you are all freaked out. Look at how well I manipulated you, if I had just said that I had started smoking you would have been all “oh you suck , your such a faily failure!”, but after saying I was doing something horrible, you are all like “oh, whew, man you had me scared and freaked out, so smoking isn’t so bad after all”... yeah, but I’m betting with all the taxes its probably teh cheaper to make crack in my own bathtub, but yeah, its ONLY smoking.

So, Dear Chantix, its me again. Thank you for the wonderful side effects with the bizarro dreams, the waking up at 3am and not going back to sleep. I look forward to the noxious gas and uncontrollable bowels again. I missed you so.

It's ok, nothing to see here

This afternoon I went to make hubby a latte. I have one of these wonderful machines:
Its a Starbucks Sirena. I have no idea why they stopped making these, they're fantastic. Easy to use, easy to clean, it makes lattes fast and they are mighty tasty. Haven't had any problems with it... until today.

Plugged it in and hit the on button. Nothing happened. Hit the on button again. Nothing. Unplugged it and plugged it in again, hit the on button... nothing. It was at this point that a very low keening noise came from my throat. Hubby knows this sound. "what's wrong?" I explained that the latte machine wasn't turning on. I moved aside, because men like to see these things for themselves, and for all he knows I forgot to plug it in or something mundane like that. He plugged it in, hit the button... nothing. He unplugged it and plugged it in... nothing. He plugged the rice cooker in and it worked.

"its broke" he pronounced.

I did this:

I mean, come on, what else is there to do when your coveted and very expensive latte machine is pronounced "broke". Holy crap, I mean we drink a lot of latte, but not enough to break it. Besides, its not like I was using it and it began to smoke and make strange exploding noises or anything for christ's sake, I mean it was just sitting there, worked fine last time I used it and now broke? It spontaneously just broke while it was sitting there? What breaks by just sitting there? Did some part just fall off in there for no real reason? Was there an earthquake that nobody felt but the Sirena, and it caused all sorts of internal issues? How does something break when its just sitting there?????

Oh, the part that plugs into the actual unit had come unplugged... never mind.

WTF?

I've been in a foul mood lately (sorry hubby), getting all wrapped up in the stupid economy, future craptastic healthcare scheme, and just everything seemingly going to crap in a handbasket all at the same time. Hey, go figure, that's life, but still, does it ALL have to go to crap at the same time.

Frankly, I should look at my petty little inconveniences and actually feel thankful for them. I could have it much worse, and other people do, so I should just say "hey, that's life, it is what it is" (a saying I learned from my lawyer) and move on, but sometimes its just nice to swim in lake me and feel gloom and doom over stupid things and drive your hubby insane, like telling him the same thing over and over again because frankly you can't remember if you told him, or was it just a conversation you had in your head, or did you post it to Facebook and not tell him, and even if you did post it to Facebook, did he even read it?

I think that perhaps social media is driving me slowly insane, because I really don't know if I say things outloud, did I text it, did I post it, did I twitter it, did I SMS it, or did I e-mail it, and if I did, who did I post it to?

I've been telling people (I think) that I only have one more week in LarrWii, the Wii soft cast, but then I actually looked at a calendar and discovered that I actually have 2 weeks left. LarWii is getting a bit... rank. I had to spray him down in febreeze, and apparently you can wash the foamy innards, but I have no idea if that's true or not and I don't want to ruin it when I have to wear it, so I've been freshening the foam up with some Febreze and hope that I don't reek to high hell with each footstep.

Tonight we had a rainstorm. We need rain, but we didn't need three months of rain in an hour, so our sump pump drain pipe got a tad bit overwhelmed and was backwashing out near the house. Whoot. Then as I was folding clothes from the dryer, our heat/pump was making that distinct: "you haven't cleaned out the pvc pipe with bleach like you should have months ago so I'm not clogged and spewing water all over the cheap air filter thing, which you only have one left, so get out the bleach and snake and clear me out before I freeze something and cost you a bazillion dollars to fix/replace that you don't have" noise.

Right now one of my dogs is shrieking at me because its way past our bedtime (according to him) and he'll sit there and shriek until I go up and feed him oyster crackers just so he can stomp all over me, steal half the bed and shove his frito feet in my face throughout the night. Gosh I love my pups. I really do because today I found out that a friend of mine lost one of her beloved pups. It really takes a loss to make you realize the things you should shrug off and take in stride, and how you really need to stop and smell the puppies and realize that with all of the stupid inconveniences, the crap, the bills, the lack of money, the things that break, and the things that just don't work out... the most important things in life are those fuzzy creatures that steal your bed, and the hubby that accuses you of elbowing him in the eye at night.

Everything else is was it is.

Just a quick rant

Still peeved at the government, but right now I think I’m pretty much dying of something horrible that makes you think you’re catching a cold, but not, and also makes your stomach rumble loudly and feel as though you’re about to either:
1.) hurl
2.) crap yourself

My morning meeting tomorrow should be a hoot.

So, its 8:30 and if my stomach doesn’t make so much noise that my storm freaked out husky thinks its thunder, I’m going to go to bed and turn up the volume so I can hear the tv over my stomach.

Guess I shouldn’t have eaten tacos tonight, eh?

The Post About Making Mashed Potatoes

So, while the hubby was out riding around on his Harley that I forced him to buy to get him out of the house so I could do some home improvement projects, like napping, I had a strange urge to make meatloaf and mashed potatoes for dinner. What does napping have to do with home improvement, you may be rudely interrupting my thought process and asking, well, as I’m easily distracted I’ll answer that question by saying that its quite obvious you’ve never seen me spackle a wall, so by my not doing anything that improves our home a great deal. I bet you are sorry that you asked, and now you’re thinking why making meatloaf and mashed potatoes would be blog-worthy, and my aren’t you freakin critical tonight, who peed in your wheaties?

Like most people my kitchen is pretty devoid of any sort of fresh vegetable. What? Most people have fresh vegetables? Well, aren’t we special, its probably because you don’t work a semi-full time job and have people and animals to take care of after works and... oh shut up you freakin show offs and your fresh vegetables. We do have mint for Mojitos, so there!

Anyhoo, I found these Ore-Ida Steam-n-Mash potatoes, which are REAL potatoes in a frozen bag that you microwave and TADAAAAH mashed potatoes. Yeah, I can get into that. No potatoes on the shelf sprouting plants when you are in the mood for mashed potatoes, just drag the bag out of the freezer, microwave and... what’s this crap?

The instructions tell you to use potholders and pull the top of the bag apart. Have you ever tried to pull anything apart while wearing potholders, and NO I don’t have to hear any deviant sex thing you may have done with potholders on. Its IMPOSSIBLE to pull anything open (shut up) with potholders on. I look closer at the bag and it shows a pair of scissors and a dotted line. OHHH, I’m suppose to wear potholders and cut the stupid hot bag open... and just how is one suppose to use scissors while wearing potholders, and once again, not wanting to hear any circumcision while wearing potholders story.

So, risking the skin of my hands, I took ONE of the potholders off so I could hold the scissors and cut the bag open to find... chunks of potatoes that I’m suppose to now “mash”. WTF? I have to mash the potatoes after milk and butter??? This is just like WORK!!! Why can’t they be pre-mashed? And who has a potato masher nowadays anyway... oh, actually I do. I bought one to use to make this horrible dog food glop stuff for one of our dogs back when he was sick.... and YES I washed it before I mashed the potatoes.

So, after all of that work I fed them to the hubby who looked at them and said “Microwaved mashed potatoes?” and I nearly threw them on him, I MEAN COME ON!!!! I nearly pulled a muscle mashing those things!

Frito-Lay WTF???

The other day hubby and I went to a sandwich shop for lunch. I wanted a bag of potato chips to go with my sandwich, so I grabbed a bag of Lays potato chips... or so I thought.

What with the government concern over the obesity “epidemic” all forms of frying foods in transfat had been banned, therefore we’re now forced to choke down chips cooked in all manner of non-carcinegenic, fattening manners, such as chips fried in water, and soy, which are disgusting and vile. It didn’t surprise me to see that the bag of chips I chose were “baked”, but the “original” stamped on the package assured me that I was getting a tasty Lays chip product, so whatever.

My first clue that something was not right was when I opened the bag and discovered this:



Seriously, WTF is this? This isn’t a potato chip! This is plasterboard, and seriously, that’s what it tasted like too! It was as if some sort of horrible Star Trek transporter malfunction had taken a real potato that had been fried in tasty grease and changed it into some form of potato-chip looking thing that tasted nothing like a potato. It was so faux that if handed one of these things while blindfolded I never would have guessed “potato chip”, I most probably would have spat it out, demanded water to clean my mouth out then called my attorney. I think my exact words were “HOLY MOTHER OF GAH! What the Frick is this????”




That’s when I took a closer look at the bag and found this incriminating bit of info that should have been the font size of the entire bag to announce to the buyer of the “chips” that this bag doesn’t contain CHIPS, it contains CRISPS. WTF??? Crisps? I hate to inform you scum sucking bastards of Frito-Lay, but crisps are English for POTATO CHIPS!!! Made the exact same way that potato chips are suppose to be made, so what the heck is your definition of “crisp”? Bits of reconstituted potato manner shaped in a form that resembles a potato chip that you hope will fool consumers? I can tell you that their look won’t fool anyone and sticking one in their mouth will totally clue them in that they aren’t eating a potato chip.







To further cover their lies, the back contains this bit of info that says that regular potato chips have 10g per 1oz serving, but this bag of “snacks”... SNACKS? You can’t even claim them as a potato product or even a chip, and yet you throw these things in the SAME type of bag that use to contain your tasty potato chips, but add that whole BAKED! thing on there, as if we’re suppose to get all happy and excited and can’t wait to eat them, only to discover that the bag would have been tastier.

I’m tired of being lied to by paid liars. You may call them “marketing” people, but they’re nothing more than a bunch of liars! How can something be “new and improved”? If its new then how can you improve it? Its old and you improved it somehow, most likely by changing the stupid package colors... that doesn’t mean its improved! Stop lying to us, and stop trying to make us think that your craptastic “healthy” junk is tasty or even good for us! Just because you make things less fat doesn’t mean that people are going to lose weight and be healthier. Nope, good news for you is that they’ll just have to eat 40 times more of your product, and they will, but they’ll still get fat and unhealthy and in a few years we’ll all be paying for that with our wonderful government run healthcare... except that potato “crisps” will cost $5,000 with tax.

Always gotta be something

This morning I called the health department to rat out our neighbors, who have apparently abandoned their house, let it go to hell, and now have a mosquito breeding ground in their half crap filled swimming pool. I asked what the process was, hoping to hear the woman cheerfully say that they’ll immediately send a crew to clean up everything and give the house to very nice people who love mowing their neighbors’ lawns and cooking for them, but all I got was: um, we post notices and try to contact the owners and there might be citations and fines.

That’s it? They don’t care about their house to the point where they dumped crap in their pool and left it like that, do you actually think a citation will compel them to fix up a house they’re foreclosing on? “oh”, she chirped, “they will throw some mosquito poison stuff in the pool”. Great! That’ll make the future crack den I live next to even better. I didn’t leave my name... just felt safer that way.

I suffered throughout the stupid Sotomayor hearing thing today. Apparently every Senator has to give an opening statement. I don’t know why, other than to pee on each other and pretty much tell the world how they’re going to vote. Why bother asking her any questions, save us all some money and just let her in already and get on with ruining the country faster with crappy, expensive healthcare, investigations into things that happened 8 years ago, pointing fingers and calling everyone liars, and making me put skylights on my house to “green” it up before I sell it. Frankly, anyone that wants my house will also love having the crack den from hell next door. I did think the funniest thing said was by Senator Kauffman who said “Whoever comes to the Supreme Court better come with no balls and no strikes”. hehehe, he said no balls. I also sat and drooled a bit by the new Minnesota Senator, Mr. Franken, who spent his time talking about himself and seemed to forget why he was actually talking. Mr. Leahy did say that nobody was above the law because that’s not what a Democracy is. Well, unfortunately for Mr. Leahy, we actually live in a Republic, so perhaps he better go to whatever Democratic country he thinks he lives in.

The funniest back and forth I’ve seen in a while was between Stuart Varney and Ms. Meme Roth, who seems to be some anti-obesity person. The argument was that Delta Airline was only making stewardess uniforms up to size 18 and no larger. Apparently this rubbed some larger stewardesses (oops, I mean flight attendants) wrong. Here’s the exchange. I have to side on Ms. Roth’s side on this one frankly... go ahead and hate me all you want, but if I’m on a burning airplane, I don’t want a size 26 flight attendant in my way, its bad enough I gotta deal with other people and small children in those miniscule aisles and seats. I want someone I can heave to the side and make my escape, so the thinner the better.

I don’t even want to go into the fun-fest of my car insurance company, who seems to have their heads up their asses, and now I have to call them tomorrow and yell at them. I also have my 2 week foot recheck. I have to say that I actually like my boot, Larry (or Larwii). Its very comforting and frankly a good excuse to use the elevator to go up one floor.

I’m going to go up and stare at the tv mindlessly and eat those pure sugar faux flavored ice pops by the handful.

New Stuff

Hubby got his Harley today, he’s out riding it around. I got my new mondo huge iMac yesterday and I’m test driving it. After staring at a 15 inch screen for years, the 24 inch screen takes some getting use to. Its HUGE and bright and I don’t have to lean over and squint any more. I’m guessing cartooning will be a lot easier on it, and already downloaded the trial version of Corel Painter on it to see if the expensive ultra mega mega full blown version is better than the elements version I’ve been using.

I have to say, I LOVE the new huge screen, and I’m hoping it’ll get me motivated to do more with cartooning and stuff, but generally just getting use to how bright it is is the biggest adjustment.

I’ve decided that the medium Wacom Intuos4 pad will be the way to go. I just don’t have enough desk space for the large pad, so that’ll be a cost saver right there. Actually the biggest issue is where to park the mondo huge Harley, as it won’t seem to fit under our front porch, and just parking it in the driveway is more than hubby can handle because even though he bought a cover, parking it out in the elements is akin to cruel and unusual punishment for the motorcycle. Hey, whatever, he’s happy (out riding around even as I type), and we can accommodate whatever vroomy needs to keep him happy.

Its going to be hard to keep up with the housework and stuff now that I have a cool new computer, but with hubby out on the bike cruising around, I don’t think he’ll notice, nor care. I do have a ton of laundry sitting in the bathroom right now that I should be doing, but I have a new toy, screw the laundry, besides, there’s one more day in the weekend to do all of that horrible housework stuff.

Hubby did mow the front lawn, which means I can now call the health department on the neighbors who have apparently abandoned their house. Every time I go outside I’m armed with the mosquito zapper tennis racket thing to kill the swarms that attack me and the dogs. Poor things don’t like going outside because they get attacked, and frankly I’m not too thrilled about that. We can’t even go on our deck without getting eaten alive.

So, today was good. Motorcycle, new iMac, spent some time with some friends at their engagement party, ate some good food, the only thing missing was a nap, so I need to schedule one of those for tomorrow in between loads of laundry.

That’s about it, no ranting today.

Don't Tear Me Down - Widget

Dear Chantix, you LIAR and stumps

Ok, so the last time we talked I was begging for detachable feet or at the very least something with a bit more of a kick in it like Vicodin, because its not very adult to stand in the middle of a mall weeping because your feet hurt and you still had half a mall before you even got to the Apple store and there’s just no way you can make it back to the truck even if that’s where the Starbucks was.

What does this have to do with Dear Chantix you may ask? Well, apparently now my dearest Chantix must come with a warning label that says you shouldn’t believe the voices that Chantix plants in your head about leaping off of buildings or flinging yourself into traffic... which are very compelling. Yep, apparently the FDA, who is right on the ball with recalling tainted food products (hehehe, I wrote taint) days after hundreds are sickened, are now requiring that warning labels be affixed to the dear Chantix that warns you about suicidal thoughts and depression. Of course, you’ll have to get through the whole crapping your pants and double over stomach pains warnings before hitting that little gem of information. The thing that cracks me up the most about this article is this quote:

“The antidepressant Wellbutrin, which has the same active ingredient as GlaxoSmithKline PLC's Zyban, already carries such a warning.” AHAHAHAAAAAAA seriously? An antidepressant that makes you depressed? That’s all sorts of genius isn’t it???

Ok, back to the whole feet drama, yes I was weeping and keening in the middle of a mall because it was Apple store or abject pain in my feet and the whole stubborn “I’m not going to beg my husband to drive the car into the mall to pick me up so that I don’t have to walk any farther” drama. There’s also never a handicapped person on a scamp around when you need to hijack one. I did make it to the apple store and back, but it was touch and go.

Monday morning I sat on hold with the obnoxiously happy hold music (which needs to come with its own disclaimer that when your feet hurt you may be tempted to kill innocent people while being on hold) only to be told that my X-rays were negative. Seriously? So that’s suppose to be comforting that there’s nothing medically wrong with me that can be seen by X-ray so the agony of walking is all in my head or something??? I called the podiatrist and when they asked how severe the pain was I told them that if I didn’t get an appointment in the next few hours they needed to turn on the local news to see me holding up the local CVS for crutches and vicodin, and they kindly squeezed me into an afternoon slot.

Note to self: find new podiatrist as their office is located in a cell phone dead spot... I was seen after three games of mahjong and years of foot doctor school qualified my sadistic podiatrist to gently press on the very areas that would cause me to leap from the half chair thing and scream like a little girl. Apparently this means I hosed up my ankle and stress fractured one of those little foot bones that are integral to the whole walking without pain process. I was summarily strapped into a stylish gray ski boot and given a prescription for stronger NSAIDS (and the next day the FDA says those will make my liver explode, but between suicidal Chantix and exploding liver and feet of pain, I’m pretty sure that years of military alcohol abuse has pickled my liver to a point where nothing could harm it short of a spear or vacation in a third world country where I wake up in a bathtub full of ice).

Anyhoo, I get to wear the nice boot for two weeks (during the summer... how quaint) and go back for a check up and then probably more time in the boot, and frankly I think this is a great way to save money on left shoes. I can at least walk halfway normal and without too much pain, but I’m sick of telling people HOW I hurt my foot. Seriously, I hurt it running in place during Wii Active.... no really... fine, I was injured in a bar fight. Ok, fine, I was parachuting the other day... no really a bear was in the yard attacking my neighbor (seriously, I’d actually take video of the mauling and sell it to TMZ or something), no really, its a wiinjury and no I’m not suing... unless you’re a lawyer and want to represent me and then I’m all about the horrible pain and suffering and stuff.

Yeah, so I’m waiting for the elevator at work and it hits the 2nd floor and as usual, someone starts to walk out because they think its the 1st floor and just how lazy can a person be to take an elevator down 1 floor... then I hobble in with my boot and they get all “oh, you have a reason” looking and even say something about “oh yeah, you need to take the elevator because you have a broken foot”, to which I say to them “um, no I don’t” and just stand there and stare at the top of the elevator door trying not to laugh. Tomorrow if someone asks what I did to my foot I’m going to say “um, nothing, why?”

Pred in the head

You may have noticed the lack or ranting during the whole ivy fiasco and that’s mainly because I can’t keep a simple thought in my head for more than... sonofa, there it goes.

Ivy lesions not draining or itching too much.
I’m barely able to walk because I now have wiichiles tendon issues in both feet, which may be worsened by the pred, but who knows. I walk like a duck and look like a 90 year old going down the stairs. Shut up or I’ll hit you with my cane if I had a cane and frankly I may be needing one. In case you don’t get it, I’ve maimed my achilles tendons while doing Wii Active, therefore I have Wiichiles. I want my name in a medical journal.

Non-stop storming has cause the structural integrity of my hair to lose all mass and float into space aka: I look like Roseanna Roseannadanna and not happy about it. I will be making a hair appointment with my wonderful stylist Katie, who will yell at me for getting the whole bobbed look instead of my normal look and how the hell do I think she can transform me back to my wonderful old hair style now that I’m all layered and have bangs that she warned me were a huge mistake. For this I pay her a lot of money and apologize a lot.

If I’m unable to walk by Wednesday I’ve vowed to call my doctor and either beg for large amounts of painkillers, a wheelchair, bed rest, or permanent disability or at the very least some physical therapy at the place where I had my thumb therapy so I can gaze upon the hunkiness of the head therapy guy. If I’m going to be in pain I may as well derive some enjoyment out of the pain, or short term disability and a cool surgical scar. Of course I can’t have anything that keeps me from my friday hair appointment, because If I’m going to be stuck in bed, I have to have cool hair and if I’m going to physical therapy, I have to have cool hair too. Recovery is dependent upon cool hair.

Watching “What not to wear” last night, only because Loki was asleep on the remote, and NOBODY moves Loki when he’s asleep. I saw absolutely NOTHING wrong with the look before they made the woman into a cheap harlot in a dress and incredibly painful high heels that I would wear if I didn’t have wiichiles, and if my legs weren’t covered in open poison ivy sores that weep. Yeah, I’m totally there except for those little things. I was also forced to watch the show about the primordeal dwarves or whatever they are called. Itty bitty people with squeeky voices. I felt sorry for them especially the 10 year old girl whose 10 year old “friends” totally didn’t stick up for her and include her in stuff, which made me want to find them and drown them. Of course I would never do that, because it would mean I’d have to get out of bed and actually chase them down and with wiichilles that aint’ happening. Besides, they’d make fun of my hair too.

Ok, where was I... last week the water main in front of our house broke and today we still have a big dirt filled hole in the street that is slowly washing away and pretty soon will suck up a car or children. I guess I have to wait for some stimulus thing before they fix my street and replace my dead lawn. I’m guessing the street will get fixed and my lawn will remain dead, just a hunch.

Ok, I’ve rambled enough, so I’ll end on this note: no matter what happens, there’s always time for ice cream, except if you are a Republican.

I've Lost the Will to Live

Its gotta be the pred, all 6 of those vile, melt in your mouth steroid things that are coursing through my body at this moment to stop this ghastly poison ivy itch and give me a huge forehead and make me ineligible to play professional baseball.

Yes, I woke up this morning, rinsed off all the calamine spots and hauled my spotted butt (actually, about the only thing not affected by the poison ivy) to a Minute Clinic, conveniently located not anywhere near where I live because apparently the one near where I live isn’t there any more, even though they built a nice room for it and that’s where I went for some other incredibly badly timed whatever it was give me drugs moments.

The doctor laughed at me while pouring alcohol on everything I touched and gave me a prescription for reducing dose of Prednisone and there I was trying to wash those shit pills down, all 6 of them. I feel bad for my dog who had to take 3 of them reducing dose when we thought he had some kind of horrible auto-immune thing, but it turned out to be JUST Lyme disease (seriously, wish for the Lyme and not the auto-immune because antibiotics takes care of the Lyme, auto-immune is not so happy)... I apologize now to Sam, I’m sorry Sam. You have every right to insist that you shove my 6 melty, foul tasting pills down my throat and blow in my nose.

Ok, so lets take stock of things:

1.) covered in oozing, itchy poison ivy lesions
2.) big honking zit on side of face
3.) Jonesing for either Chantix or a smoke
4.) Still experiencing some foul gastro-intestinal things from former lover Chantix

I am a picture of sexy right now, so what would put some icing right on that cake of ghastly, what could possibly be missing when so much is raining down on me....

why of course, the crowning glory, the icing on the cake, the cherry on top... broken tooth.

Teeth should be much stronger than frozen M&Ms. I do realize that fillings may NOT be as strong as starburst fruit chews, but teeth should be able to withstand some frozen M&Ms, especially since I was eating them one at a time, allowing them to thaw somewhat in my mouth before chewing, WTF.

Of course we don’t have the wonderful Obamacare, where I’m sure that I would be able to just get up and waltz over to one of the 24 hour, 7 days a week, 365 days a year free dental clinics he promised us and get something done about this, but no.... my dental horror is premature and I must wait... like everyone else, until Monday to make an appointment with my regular dentist and get it taken care of... spending the next few days eating on the other side and getting sick to my stomach each time I feel the gaping hole with my tongue... OH SONOFA... I think my dentist is closed on Mondays... WTF, that’s 2 days before I can even call and schedule something... where’s that wonderfully free and always available healthcare I’ve been promised???? Would you stop sending Uighur terrorists to tropical vacation spots to be towel boys and get on with that whole new free always available health care program thing so I can get my tooth fixed!!!!!

Damn, now I itch again.

Are those open sores or are you just happy to see me

Oh yes, just as I expected, those vines were definitely poison ivy, either that or I’ve spontaneously broken out in leprosy. Hmmm, thrown into a nice leper colony and left alone for fear of spreading my disease to others.... ok, while tempting, if leprosy itches like poison ivy then I think I’d rather just be killed, or at the very least scratched with a rake until I bled to death. It would be the ecstasy and the agony all wrapped up into one neat bundle.

I’m slathered in some vile smelling concoction cream that screams “STOPS THE ITCH FOR UP TO 8 HOURS” on the box, but this crap has only given me, at most, a half hour of relief before I’m slathering even more on. The color is one shade of caucasian skin tone from the pink calamine crap you normally bathe in for poison ivy, which means its neon tan on my blotchy red-head skin. I look like a leper with bad body make up. I can’t wait for my client meeting tomorrow! First its iced mocha spilled in my lap, now festering sores. Oh, did I mention the huge grotesque zit on the side of my nose. I’m feeling oh so pretty!

We’re suppose to get thunder storms tonight, which means my female husky will claw me in her anxiety over the thunder. I’m actually looking forward to it, since my arms are tired from scratching my oozing skin.

Gardening for neurotics

Ok, so I started with two flower beds in the front of the house that were filled with weeds and two half-dead bushes. No amount of willing it to be filled with “wildflowers” would make it less grotesque, so I ripped out the weeds and cut the half-dead bushes down to stumps.

Removing half-dead bush stumps proved too taxing after 5 minutes of trying to dig them up, so I just covered them with weed barrier and dumped 6 bags of mulch over them... not nearly enough mulch, but one interesting thing about mulch when the bag rips and it gets wet... its NASTY. Not as nasty as finding the maggot covered cat poop with my bare knee, but nasty still.

I put the decorative little wooden things around the two trees in front, but didn’t have enough mulch to put in the decorative little wooden things, so it looks like gardening done by a moron (namely me).

I’m pretty sure the vine thing growing between my edge of property and along the stupid worthless picket fence thing the crappy neighbors have allowed to gone to shit is actually poison ivy, and it really didn’t want to come out of the ground when I pulled it, nor did its vines want to be cute with the sewing scissors I brought out (because my poisonous vine cutters are in the storage room where they were used to cut up about 500lbs of styrofoam from various and sundry empty computer boxes that we were paying $165.00 a month to store... we’re taking care of that, so shut up).

Anyhoo, it was after I had ripped the probably poison ivy out of the ground and in the process rubbing it over my entire body except for the part covered in cat poop and maggots that I realized that crappy neighbor’s trees were leaning into my yard directly over my heat pump.

Crappy neighbors seemed nice enough when they moved in, but much like fish... went sour really quick when apparently they didn’t realize that homeownership requires maintenance. The first to go was the in ground pool, which they didn’t take care of and soon the liner ripped. To solve that problem, they proceeded to dump fill dirt filled with rocks into it. I think what they were aiming for was to just fill it in, but apparently had no clue that it would take half of the earth to fill in, so they gave up about 1/3 filled. In another brilliant move, they felt that since it was 1/3 filled with crappy dirt, they could just rake their leaves into it. That coupled with a good downpour or twenty created mosquito heaven. So they covered it and pretended it wasn’t there.

About 2 months ago a “pod” showed up on the driveway, and sporadically we see them carrying things out, so the pod, the fact that they haven’t mowed their grass since spring (3 months ago) and nobody ever around makes us think that they’ve foreclosed or just ran away. In the meantime we have a little amazon jungle growing next door, complete with malaria pool, and large trees sprouting right next to our fence. Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.

Now, I didn’t trespass at all, in the sense that not one part of my body set foot or otherwise on their property. I don’t consider leaning over their fence on a ladder and sawing half of their tree down trespassing, but I do consider half a tree leaning into my yard and pressing against my fence a bit of an issue.

I do hope they come by to pick up more of their junk tomorrow. They might even think “hey, that looks like half of my tree neatly cut into a pile laying on our neighbor’s curb (if we had a fucking curb, cheap ass county and their $2.4 million in recycling and we don’t have a curb or a fricken street light)

I’m sure tomorrow I’ll be bitching about being covered in open sores.

Dear Chantix

Its been 67 days since I had a smoke.... oh glorious nicotine, how I miss you, and a decent dream that didn’t involve something stupid like Kinkajou herding in a suit of armor, or raining peeps (which seems like a fun thing until the fuckers start melting all over your car, then what are you gonna do), and I tried going off of you after day 60, because seriously how hard should it be to kick a 20 year habit and by then I would think that my body would have oozed out all of the nicotine from my system already, but NOOOOO.

I started craving yesterday and getting all antsy (which is a nice way of saying pissy and wanting to kill people), so back at the pills I go as of this morning. I was just getting use to not having strange dreams and being able to sleep for more than 3 hours at a time, but then again I did start crying at little things, like running out of pimento dip or having to put dishes in the dishwasher.

I tried something called “Rescue Remedy” which is touted as a natural sedative for dog anxiety, but in human form, and I did intend to give it to my dog during thunderstorms to keep her from panting and clawing me bloody, but since that didn’t work I figured I’d just take it and not care that she was panting and clawing me bloody, but it only lasts for a half hour at best and then I was back to wanting to strangle people and crying over Scooter Store commercials.

I find it ironic that someone on Facebook suggested I go to the vet and get some Xanax for my dog to calm her during thunderstorms, and frankly that was pretty much the last straw for me as far as life and my expensive medical plan goes. If I can just walk into a vet and get Xanax for my dog when I can’t even get my personal physician to prescribe some for me no matter how manic depressive I act when I go in there, then the world is so totally screwed up that I can’t even begin to fit in anywhere.

So, dear Chantix, I will renew my prescription AGAIN and keep taking you, even with the stupid dreams and the messed up gastro-intestinal fest, until such time that I can find a licensed physician to prescribe me something to “take the edge off” of life or the next election, whichever comes first.

Dear Chantix

Its over between us. Yes, just yesterday I was considering another month of your wonderful nauseating, bloating, mind scrambling effects, but last night’s vivid dream was the end of our relationship.

Granted, I didn’t really mind the whole getting carjacked and losing my precious RAV to hoodlums, nor was I really disturbed with being shot in the back, or having hubby complaining about bleeding on his leather seats as he drove me to the hospital.

No, the last straw for me was how you made us drive all over the place looking for a hospital because we couldn’t figure out how to make a phone call on my iPhone. I think you already know that my love for the iPhone outweighs any of the benefits you provide me. I am willing to forego the morning and evening nausea after taking you, the noxious gas, the bloated feeling, and even the “I don’t give a rat’s ass about anything” attitude that comes from not being able to have 1 clear thought for more than 2 seconds that I’ve had with you.

As I sit here, craving all manner of junk food and the potential of bloating up to a gazillion pounds and ending up on a Learning Channel show that highlights several construction workers hauling me out of the roof on a crane because I’m too big to fit through a door, at least I don’t want to smoke and that’s what you were there for. I’m going Chantix cold turkey now, mmmm turkey sandwich with deviled eggs.

So, this is good-bye... well, sorta because I know I’ll have to wean myself from you slowly, so I’ll just take you in the morning so I’ll be brain dead by day, which is what I prefer.

What Not to Name a Phone

If you don't get it, go here

One of "those" days

Before I go throw myself in bed and hope the Mayans were a few years off on the prediction for the end of the world and actually it will happen tomorrow so I don’t have to go to work (yes, I would rather that the whole planet die than go to work... seriously, don’t you?) let me tell you about my day.

Some of you will say “oh geez, really, that’s nothing, let me tell you about MY day” and frankly, just stop right there, I don’t want to hear it. This isn’t a contest, this is all about ME, its MY blog and dammit I had the worst day, there, blue ribbon awarded, contest over.

We start off with an idiot on the road who decided to pace me as I tried to gain enough speed to merge into the treacherous Maryland highway traffic. I nearly sideswiped said idiot because he was right in my blind spot. I slowed, so did he, I sped, so did he. Luckily the mighty 4 cylinder RAV4 was more powerful than his hunk of junk yard waste hauling truck and I outran him before I ran out of merge area... and gave him the finger. If the driver is reading this... I hope you die.

Got into the office and dragged my cup to the Flavia machine and had to wait for three other people to get their coffee before I plunked my foil packet of House Blend in the machine. It made a strange noise, puked out water all over the counter, clunked a few times then told me to call for help as it was mortally wounded. I ignored its pleas and walked over to the other kitchen place ALL the way around the stupid building and got my coffee. Luckily someone was able to fix the issue by the time I was ready for cup #2, but good gah.

When I finally did sit down I see in my e-mail that someone wants me to go to their place for a meeting in an hour. Are you freaking kidding me? I JUST sat down! I respond with a counter-office of after lunch and luckily this appeased them.

Fast forward to after lunch when I’m driving to the place to have the meeting while happily sipping my iced venti 2 pump mocha when I get a funny feeling. Funny as in cold where its not suppose to be and yes, there is the icing on the cake of my day (or so I thought) I am dribbling iced mocha all over the crotch of my tan pants. Lovely, now I look like a projectile pooped my pants or have some sort of horrendously disgusting urinary issue ( and before you laugh, there was a medical case where some guy had colostomy or something and when they hooked the plumbing back up apparently the fudge factory was connected to the lemonade factory, etc. and I’m sure its true because I heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend’s aunt’s sister by marriage via e-mail).

Ok, so luckily I have a jacket in the RAV and I stylishly tie it around my waist with one arm strategically falling over the soiled area, and I totally didn’t look like a dork with poop looking stains walking into the building, nor walking around inside either.

It was at this point that I decided that the day was shot and I should just go home, so I did. Just no reason to hang around while a bird poops on my head or something worse, I’ll just go home and at least have a change of clothes.

Get home and decide to spot clean some... spots. What with two dogs with stomach issues, things were a bit out of control on the carpet, so I steam cleaned some of the more interesting areas, and then went to feed the dogs... and somehow managed to drop Loki’s full food bowl upside down on the kitchen floor. Poor pup didn’t know what to think, but helped me clean up the mess and I got him a fresh bowl of food.

I don’t even want to go into the torrential downpours, the fact that Meeshka slid in mud and dislodged one of the vital jury rigged with duct tape downspout things causing a bit of drainage problems in our back porch thing, because after the dog bowl incident, everything is pretty much a denial situation.

I just checked the weather for tonight and see that we’re suppose to get thunderstorms around 2 am, which means I will be clawed awake by a frantic, panting Meeshka and have to take refuge with her in the guest room... which is pretty much the same as our room, but apparently different in some way that calms her, but I’m stuck sleeping on a non-sleep number bed and will wake up paralyzed. So I guess tomorrow will suck too. Whoot.